Of the nearly 1,200 Muslim voters surveyed in June by the Council for American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), 55 percent said they had voted for Bush in 2000, but only 3 percent of those same voters would vote to re-elect him.
A full 54 percent of those surveyed said they would vote for Sen. John Kerry, the presumptive Democratic nominee, and 26 percent said they would vote for independent Ralph Nader.
The drop in Muslim support for the president is dramatic—exit polls in the 2000 election indicated that Bush carried between 70 percent and 80 percent of the Muslim vote.
Muslim activists say their community may carry enough weight in key states like Ohio, Florida and Pennsylvania to swing the vote for Kerry. CAIR has launched voter registration drives in California, Florida, Ohio and Texas, hoping to have 1.5 million Muslims registered to vote in November.
Eugene Bird, president of the Council for the National Interest, a Middle East watchdog group, said Bush won Florida—a state that was decided by 537 votes—with 64,000 more Muslim votes than Democrat Al Gore.
Nihad Awad, CAIR's executive director, said the nation's 5 million to 7 million Muslims have mainstream views on domestic issues, but have been turned away by the Bush administration's war on terrorism.
"What makes them different than most of the voters in this society is because they have been the prime target of certain practices of the government, they feel that their civil liberties have been sacrificed," Awad said.
